The present invention pertains to a process and a device for testing the correctness of answers to quiz questions via media and events, especially television and radio, in which for playing games, the coding of solutions entered in control data is performed at the organizer and the participant according to an identical mathematical formula.
In quiz programs in events, especially via television or radio, but also in live events at fairs, events and the like, only the actively participating candidates have the possibility via a question and answer game to be identified as winners and to possibly be awarded a prize based on their knowledge and the answers given by them correctly.
The audience, especially at home, but also in live events, can participate in the quiz only passively, because the organizer is unable to immediately identify a winner according to the criterion xe2x80x9cknowledgexe2x80x9d among very many people. However, the organizer can also involve the audience in a quiz program by calling upon them to send an answer to the organizer in the form of a solution word or to call in and to give the solution over the telephone. However, such a method has decisive disadvantages, namely,
a) The winners are not identified according to the criterion xe2x80x9cknowledgexe2x80x9d but according to the criterion xe2x80x9cchance,xe2x80x9d because, e.g., one participant is selected at random among many respondents or one participant has reached the organizer with his answer among many callers. Most viewers therefore do not participate in such games, because, according to the current possibilities, the luck or chance in getting through a winner rather than the knowledge of the particular participant is in the foreground.
b) The questions or the problem put to the viewer can be of a very limited scope only, and what is usually requested is a few characters of a solution, a solution word or a sentence as a solution. This is due to the fact that the evaluation of a large number of viewers and consequently of a large number of questions becomes too expensive for the organizer. The consequence of this is that the viewer can be actively integrated in the quiz program over a very limited time period only.
c) In the case of sending in answers, e.g., by mail, the quiz event proper and the drawing of the winner are spaced apart in time so much that the quiz program loses much of its suspense for the participants.
A means for playing an electronic game with a play-back device for alphanumeric and graphic information, which is sent to the play-back device via a network or a storage medium, has been known from DE 195 47 902 A1. This information contains the coded solution. With such means, it is necessary to send coded solutions to the play-back device via an outward channel or an external storage medium. Additional information can be sent together with corresponding teletext pages, with a digital broadcast program signal, analog program signals provided with radio data system signal or by downloading from a CD. Consequently, an outward channel or an external storage medium for the coded solutions is always connected to the play-back device. This represents a considerable expense to the organizer. Furthermore, there is a risk that the coded solutions or answers will be fraudulently decoded and thus they imply considerable risks.
Furthermore, a means for participation in quiz games, which receives its information via an acoustic tone sent by the television set, a video or audio cassette, has been known from EP 0 474 923 A1. The means comprises an amplifier, a filter, a decoder, a keyboard, a display and a winner display. The signal transmission is performed via an audio channel, headphone and transmission line. Coded solutions are transmitted via an outward channel in this means as well, so that there is likewise a risk of decoding.
The object of the present invention is to propose a process and a device with which participation in quiz programs is possible without coded solutions having to be transmitted and without an outward channel being necessary.
This object is accomplished according to the present invention by the organizer and the participants each having an identical quiz computer, by the participant answering the questions asked in the event, by the participant entering the answers via a keyboard in a quiz computer, by permanently preset confirmation data being assigned to the control data in a memory of the device, by the control data and the confirmation data being displayed separately on the display in the device of the participant, by the organizer entering the correct answers to the questions asked via the keyboard in his quiz computer, by preset confirmation data being likewise assigned to the control data of the organizer""s computer in a memory of the device, by the control data andxe2x80x94not recognizably for the participantsxe2x80x94the confirmation data being displayed in the organizer""s device, by the participant comparing the control data displayed on the organizer""s device with the control data on his device, by the participant informing the organizer, e.g., over the telephone, that his control data agree with the control data of the organizer and communicating the confirmation data being displayed on his device to the organizer, and by the organizer comparing the confirmation data of the participant that are sent to him with his confirmation data. Other embodiments of the present invention are described herein.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the answers to quiz questions are entered by the particular participant one after another in a quiz computer via a keyboard and stored. At the same time, the correct answers to the quiz questions are entered in a quiz computer located at the organizer and stored and the participant can then compare the control data item, which is determined from the data entered by him and is displayed on the display of the computer, with the control data item that is being displayed on the display of the computer at the site of the organizer. In case of the agreement between the control data items on both devices, i.e., if the participant has answered the question(s) correctly, the participant informs the organizer over the telephone that he gave the correct answers. For control, a confirmation data item is exclusively assigned in the computer to the control data item present on the display and is displayed on another display of the computer, so that the same confirmation data item is present on both the device of the organizer and the device of the participant, and the participant transmits this confirmation data item to the organizer over the telephone simultaneously with the control data item.
The present invention makes it possible to make quiz events very attractive to the audience via media, especially television and radio, because the participants actively participate in the question and answer game via the quiz computer and can be identified as winners as a real candidate during the program and according to the criterion xe2x80x9cknowledge.xe2x80x9d
The process will be described in detail below:
The answers entered by the participant in the computer via the keyboard, e.g., in the form of characters of the keyboard, after depressing the START key, are converted into a sequence of numbers, e.g., by program control. A very specific confirmation data item, which is set by the computer program automatically and is in a defined relationship with the control data item and with this control data item only, is assigned to this sequence of numbers, which is called the control data item. The assignment may be performed in any manner desired, but it is necessary for this control data item to correspond to a single confirmation data item only. To eliminate sources of error as much as possible, the control data item and the confirmation data item are possibly high numbers (which may, of course, also be sequences of characters), and additional data may be assigned to these numbers for more security.
The consequence of the entry of answers via the keyboard of the computer is fundamentally, on the whole, a control data item, which triggers a confirmation data item, so that the participant in the quiz sets the control data item by his answers and assigns to the control data item a confirmation data item that corresponds to this control data item only and on which the participant has no influence.
The assignment of the control data item and the confirmation data item may be performed, e.g., in such a way that a large amount of pairs of numbers are stored in a memory, and a confirmation data item is assigned to a control data item. This requires a relatively large memory capacity if the particular data items consist of many digits.
To reduce the memory capacity needed, it is proposed according to the present invention that the control data item and the confirmation data item be permanently assigned to one another such that the pairs of numbers are not stored together and completely from the beginning in the memory, but the confirmation data item as well as the control data item are calculated according to a (different) mathematical formula, so that an unambiguous and single confirmation data item, which is, however, always calculated anew, is assigned to each control data item.
An additional data security against manipulations is achieved according to the present invention by suppressing and not displaying certain numbers in the case of the control data item used, so that the control data item is displayed in a truncated form and the solution word cannot thus be inferred from the truncated word. This also applies correspondingly to the case in which the confirmation data item is converted in addition to the control data item. This will be explained below on the basis of examples.
Another variant of the present invention, by which the degree of security against manipulations can be further increased, is the incorporation of another security step. If the control data item and the confirmation data item are displayed on the display of the device, the date and time are simultaneously displayed on the display of the device and the corresponding data are stored, so that the participant can later present his device as proof for identification and document that he secured his result and when he did so.
Another possibility of security is that the participant receives a personal identification number for this device, which is different from that of every other device of the same type.
For comparison of the confirmation data item that the winner or winners sends/send to the organizer, it may be expedient to incorporate an additional security component in such a form that the organizer switches his telephone line in such a way that a certain part of the telephone number to be dialed by the participant corresponds to a group of digits of the confirmation data item that represents the solution. The consequence of this is that only participants who have the correct solution can call but those with a wrong answer cannot, so that the switched lines will not be unnecessarily jammed.
According to a variant of the present invention, the answers to the questions asked are entered one after another via the keyboard, and each answer is stored by depressing a CONFIRMATION key, so that after entering an answer and depressing the CONFIRMATION key, the participant can enter the next answer and confirm this answer. The consequence of this method is that the individual answers are stored and made available in the quiz computer until the signal for generating the control data item, which appears on the display of the quiz computer and triggers the confirmation data item, which is displayed on a second display of the quiz computer, is given by depressing the END key.
In another variant of the process according to the present invention, the particular answer is entered via the keyboard of the device, a control data item, which corresponds to this answer, is triggered for this answer via the CONFIRMATION key, and the confirmation data item, which is assigned to the control data item and only to this control data item, is polled. If the next question is answered, another control data item is triggered for this answer. The process is continued by entering the solution via the keyboard, by depressing the CONFIRMATION key and triggering the new control data item and confirmation data item corresponding to the new answer.
Thus, the correctness of the answers is clarified immediately after the particular question in this second variant, so that the participant who gave a wrong answer to a question and determined this by comparing his control word with the control word of the organizer will no longer participate in further answering questions, but he can determine himself that he has been eliminated.
Such a procedure is particularly suitable if an elimination is to be performed among the participants, for which live events or similar events are especially suitable.
The process according to the present invention can also be performed via a virtual computer or the corresponding program or software of the device on a PC.
The present invention will be described below in connection with the drawings based on an exemplary embodiment.
The various features of novelty which characterize the invention are pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this disclosure. For a better understanding of the invention, its operating advantages and specific objects attained by its uses, reference is made to the accompanying drawings and descriptive matter in which preferred embodiments of the invention are illustrated.